External Democracy Promotion in Post-Conflict

Zones: Evidence from Case Studies

Bosnia

Kristie Evenson

Freie Universität Berlin

This report has been commissioned by Freie Universität Berlin for a comparative project on the international factors shaping transitions to democracy in post-conflict countries. See http://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/polwiss/forschung/international/frieden/ib/projekte/democracypromotion/index.html.

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External Democracy Promotion in Post-Conflict Zones:

Evidence from Case Studies

An Introduction To The Project

Christoph Zuercher

U of Ottawa and Freie Universität Berlin

The Research Question

Can countries emerge from civil wars as democracies? And if they can - to what extent and

by what means can external actors support such a transition? While much research effort

has been devoted to the question of how warring societies break the conflict trap and return

to peace, much less effort has so far been spent on investigating under what circumstances

warring societies not only end violence, but succeed in creating a stable and democratic

polity. Political theorists, from Machiavelli to Huntington, are in general very skeptical

with regard to the possibility of democratic regimes arising out of civil war. Instead, many

see an intermediate stage of autocratic rule as unavoidable in order to overcome societal

divisions and rebuild the fundamental political institutions of the polity. The empirical

evidence seems indeed to suggest that countries rarely emerge from war as democracies.

When we look at the overall population of countries that experienced a civil war after

WWII (regardless of whether there was a peacebuilding mission or not), we find little

reason for optimism. Only 10% of the countries that experienced civil wars reached a

polity score of +7 or higher (approximately like Kenya, Moldova or Mali) two years after

war ended. 53 % all war-affected countries show a polity score of -5 or lower two years

after the end of civil war, that is, a regime type similar to Gambia or Iran. 37% have a

polity score of -7 or lower, similar to Belarus or Uzbekistan (all data is from Sambanis,

Nicholas, with Michael Doyle, 2000: International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and

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Quantitative Analysis, in: American Political Science Review 94: 4, 779 - 801). The picture

looks similarly gloomy five years after the end of civil war: 52% have a polity score of -5

or lower; 39,4% have a score of -7 or lower; and only 10,6% have a score of +7 or higher.

Yet, there are historical examples of countries that did emerge from war as democracies:

Germany and Japan in the aftermath of World War II, and Mozambique, Namibia or

Macedonia in the post cold war period, to name only a few. What made these cases of post-

war democratization successful, and what, if any, role was played by external actors? This

is, in a nutshell, the puzzle that this research project investigates.

The study of post-war democratization is a relatively new field, and there is surprisingly

little empirical scholarly work devoted to the factors that allow a post-war country to

become both stable and democratic. This can partly be explained by the fact that the two

bodies of literatures, which are relevant for such an endeavor, are concerned with only one

half of the problem. The democratic transition literature is predominantly interested in the

democratic outcome of a political transition in countries which were authoritarian, but at

peace. The literature on peace building is interested in transitions from civil war to peace.

Whether this peace is accompanied by a measure of democracy or not is typically not of

interest to this body of literature. This division of labor may explain why there is only a

very small literature that is explicitly interested in outcomes which are both peaceful and

democratic. But is this division warranted, or is it perhaps a consequence of academic

inertia? The answer to this question depends on whether we think that post-war countries

are in essence a sub-class of transition cases, or whether we think that post-conflict

countries are cases sui generis.

The researchers involved in this project think that post-conflict cases are fundamentally

different from transition cases, and they assume that these differences may have an impact

on the factors which affect peace and democracy. If this is true, then it is necessary to

account for the possibility that the factors which affect a transition to democracy are not

necessarily the same, or do not necessarily have the same impact, in a post-conflict setting.

We must also account for the possibility that the factors which affect peace and democracy

respectively do not necessarily simply add up, but that they may cancel each other out. One

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implication of this is then that we have to disaggregate the concept of “success” into sub-

concepts. One way of doing this is to individually look at “absence of war”, “democratic

quality of the regime” and “state capacities”. While these three concepts may merge in the

case of fully established democracies, we argue that for countries emerging from war we

need to disaggregate them in order to be able to empirically explore which sequences and

combinations are most conducive to the normatively desirable outcome: stable democracies

at peace.

The Research Design

Given these challenges, we opted for a case study oriented research design. Case studies

allow for process-tracing, which is indispensable for discovering causal mechanisms. Case

studies allow researchers to treat cases a whole, which facilitates the identification of

multiple causation and which may lead to the identification of typological sub-classes. Case

studies can be arranged into different sets of structured comparisons; and finally, small-n

research designs are not dependent on the few available global data sets, because the small

number of cases allows researchers to collect the specific original data which they think

may be relevant for the explanation of the observed phenomenon.

We collaborated with an international team of country experts, who prepared ten structured

cases studies between October 2008 and December 2009. Our sample covers cases on

Macedonia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Tajikistan,

East Timor and Haiti. We deliberately chose cases from the post cold-war period only,

because our main interest is the contribution of external actors to post-war democratization,

and democracy promotion and massive peace building missions became fashionable and

feasible after the end of the cold war in the late 1980s.

The Universe of Cases

The universe of cases consists, theoretically, of all civil wars that came to an end after

1989. We count 52 cases (Data from Doyle/Sambanis 2000). Our main interests is the

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question of whether and how countries that were affected by large-scale violence can

emerge as stable and democratic polities, and we are particularly interested in the impact of

external support to this outcome. Other outcomes are possible and indeed more probable.

Post-conflict countries can relapse into war; post-conflict countries can emerge as stable,

yet undemocratic polities; and post-conflict countries could emerge as democratic, yet

unstable polities. For comparative purposes, we wanted to include all of these outcomes in

our sample. Furthermore, we also want to have variation on the main independent variable,

that is, the amount of external support for democracy. Hence, we have four different

outcomes, and two different values on our main independent variable. This can be depicted

in a table with 2 x 4 cells. In order to group the cases into the cells, we have to define

measures for stability, democracy and external support. Because this is not for analytical-

descriptive purpose, but for sampling, we do this in a fairly rough and ready way. We

classify countries that are still at peace five years after the war ended as stable. We classify

countries as democratic when they reach a polity IV score of 10 or higher five years after

the war ended. We proxy the amount of external support by the type of UN mission.

Countries in which a complex peace building mission, or a peace enforcement mission,

took place are coded as having received high external support. For all coding we rely on a

data set compiled by Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis (Sambanis 2000).

The next table groups all cases in the eight cells. Case in bold were included in our sample: Stable and

democratic Stable and undemocratic

Unstable and undemocratic

Unstable and democratic

High external support

Cambodia El Salvador Guatemala Mozambique

Namibia

Macedonia

Lebanon Rwanda

Yugoslavia-

Croatia

Afghanistan

Timor

Haiti 1994

n/a

Low or no external support

Bangladesh--Hill Eritrean Ethiopia-ideol Georgia-Abkhazia Georgia-Ossetia Haiti

Burma Chad Congo-Shabba I&II Djibouti Ethiopia-Ogaden Indonesia-East Tim.

n/a India-Kashmir

V

India-Sikh Israel-Palest. Kenya Mali Mexico Moldova Nicaragua Northern Ireland Papua NG Philip.-NPA Romania South Africa Sri Lanka (JVP II) Yemen

Indonesia Iran Iraq-Kurds Iraq-Kurds Iraq-Shiites Laos Morocco/WestSah Nigeria-Muslim Pakistan-Blch Tajikistan

Uganda Vietnam Rep of Yemen-S/Peoples R Zimbabwe/Rhodesia

The Research Template1

In order to generate fine-grained data, we developed a structured research template that

consists of 101 questions, divided into four sections. Country experts answered these

questions, thereby generating rigidly structured case studies with a tremendous amount of

data, which we used for comparative analysis. Only then did the authors shorten the studies

turning them into condensed analytical narratives. The original versions of the reports are

accessible at the project’s webpage.2

The first section is devoted to a description of the outcome. We disaggregate the concepts

“security”, “democracy” and “state capacities” into sub-concepts: With regard to

democracy, we inquire about various dimensions of democracy. These dimensions are rule

of law, participation, competition, and accountability. We also ask how the majority of the

population perceives democracy. Is there any cultural bias in favor or against democracy?

For example, is it seen as a Western export that suits outsiders more than the local

population? By security, we refer to whether the state is able to provide physical security to

its population by ensuring the absence of war and providing protection from other forms of

1 The Template is available here: http://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/polwiss/forschung/international/frieden/ib/projekte/democracypromotion/index.html 2 http://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/polwiss/forschung/international/frieden/ib/projekte/democracypromotion/index.html

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organized violence (e.g. criminal violence). By state capacity, we refer to the capacity of

the state administration to autonomously make decisions and effectively implement them.

In general terms, this implies that stronger states with more capacities can rely on well-

developed bureaucratic apparatuses which are staffed by cohesive cohorts of civil servants

and steered by flexible elites who have an incentive to hold in check rent-seekers and re-

deploy available resources in pursuit of strategic policy objectives. Finally, this section asks

whether the regime is seen as legitimate, and we differentiate between procedural input

legitimacy (the regime is legitimate because its procedures ensure that society can voice its

preferences and feed them into the decision-making process) and output legitimacy (the

regime is legitimate because it provides public goods).

The second section asks about long-term structural factors (such as long-term economic

development, the structure of the economy, or previous experiences with democracy), about

war-related factors (such as duration and type of war, numbers of fractions, level of war-

related destruction, and quality of any peace agreement) which may have had an impact on

the countries’ capacities for a democratic peace.

The third section inquires about neighborhood effects on democracy such as linkages and

integration; it then asks about the scope and characteristics of the external intervention

focusing on both military and non-military aspects. We are interested in state-

reconstructing and democracy-promoting measures, and in the question of how intrusive

these measures were. We also ask whether and how diplomacy, normative pressure and/or

persuasion contributed to the democratization process. Another set of questions explores

the interaction between the local elites and the interveners, their respective preferences and

constraints. These questions allow us to reconstruct the strategic interaction and bargaining

which we assume contributed to the outcome.

The fourth and final section covers development aid. Development aid is a specific form of

external intervention; we investigate it separately in order to be able to detect its distinct

effects. This section is intended to map the resource flows in the conflict country and to

assess how they contributed to democratization and stabilization. This section inquires

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about the most important donors and about the prevailing modalities of delivery. We also

asked country experts to collect disaggregated data on the sectoral distribution of aid where

available. Experts provided annual figures for: elections and political processes; rule of law,

accountability, anti-corruption, human rights and minority rights; institutional infrastructure

(parliamentary and public administration, decentralization, administrative capacity); civil

society, media, civic education, empowerment; civil-military relations, DDR, security

sector reform. Please note that these are our generic categories which may differ from those

used by donors or by the OECD-DAC, and that this data should be treated as illustrative

rather than complete for most case studies due to a lack of availability of such information.

Finally, we asked our experts to indentify instances of applied aid conditionality and to

assess the impacts.

The Case Studies

The case studies are available from our website. We think that they provide a valuable

source of fine-grained data which help us to better understand the processes which lead to a

much desired, yet rare outcome: A successful transition from war to peace and democracy.

Bosnia Case Study

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Bosnia and Herzegovina 1996-2000 and then through 2006

Executive Summary:

Bosnia and Herzegovina remains a state of contradictions. While it has managed to secure basic

security and institutional capacities, it has yet to reach the point of being both a democracy on

paper and in practice. Ethnic-based politics continued to dominate political space in BiH five as

well as ten years after the peace agreement. These politics have distorted the reform process, and

often reduced democratization efforts to zero sum games.

The list of reasons why the state has been slow to develop is extensive, but lack of political will

by domestic actors should top the list. The intransigence of domestic actors and their pursuit of

non-centralized state building agendas have been at odds with the international community since

the beginning. Only targeted and sustained international actions have managed to assist,

encourage, and coerce domestic elites into some level of cooperation.

This is partially due to the type of peace that was brokered after the violent conflict and the

aftereffects of such a war. Major displacement and destruction (framed and then actualized in

ethnic terms) resulted in a divided and shattered post-war society. Leaders of this society during

the war continued (except for the most infamous war criminals) their monopoly on power in the

post war years. This power was fueled by the economic spoils of the conflict as well as the

acquisition of most economically viable resources in the post-war years.

The significant international oversight that has been part of this statebuilding recipe in many

ways epitomizes the excesses of good intentions and limitations of internationally directed

statebuilding efforts. Whether the international community has stayed too long and has had too

heavy of a hand will likely remain a point of debate for many years. But it is clear that even if

such complex and multi-year missions are generally well resourced and are brokered by

international community consensus, success is not inevitable, at least in the five and ten year

timelines. Donor strategies that frontloaded reconstruction over more extensive efforts at

institution building and democratization programming are understandable, but also likely

contributed to the political malaise five and 10 years after Dayton.

Bosnia Case Study

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After the highest per capita aid efforts at its time, Bosnia is no longer at war and is unlikely to

again break down in such a bloody way. Without such international intervention more lives

would have been lost and further ethnic cleansing likely, resulting in a possible ethnic-based set

of state or statelet configurations that we can only imagine. But absence of such conflict works

for only so long. Today’s weak and problematic, but officially multi-ethnic state of Bosnia

remains in limbo. And it is unclear if the state will eventually gain enough legitimacy from all

the necessary domestic actors to make it viable and democratic enough to reach its European

integration objectives.

SECTION I: DEFINING INTERVENTION SUCCESS OR FAILURE

A: Democracy: How democratic is the regime that has emerged after the intervention?

The rule of law

Bosnian state structures have progressed greatly since 1996 in instituting and protecting the rule

of law. However, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) at the end of 2006 faced clear challenges in the

fair application of rule of law to its citizens, partly due to the structure of the system as well as

implementation of the system that has managed to be developed.

Establishment of and professionalization of the judicial system (on all levels) was a key objective

in the post-Dayton Bosnia. This required the development of a policing and court system that

could take on the challenges of daily domestic legal issues as well as the ability to also address

war crime cases. Legislation and institutional reforms by the end of 2006 had put in the structural

base for a judicial system reflecting democratic objectives, but implementation of these reforms

has been slow and uneven.

The Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA)1 did not provide for a state-level judicial system, leaving

this to the two entities (plus Brcko District) except for issues of international or inter-entity focus

which were covered by the state-level BiH Constitutional Court. It also did not provide for a

1 A copy of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be found at: http://www.oscebih.org/overview/gfap/eng/

Bosnia Case Study

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state-level policing system. These impeded attempts to put a more comprehensive system in

place that would allow rule of law follow through or a basic shared justice system.

For the first three years following Dayton, entity level rule of law was dominate and often

arbitrary. Laws were often a mishmash of former Yugoslav and war-time state compilations;

institutions were functioning at a low level, review of legal decisions was generally not possible

on the state level, and political will to harmonize justice systems was low. Frustration at the lack

of standards and consistency, led the Office of the High Representative (OHR) to begin issuing

specific reform decisions in mid-1999 to improve both the legal framework and the institutions.2

A heavier OHR hand along with progress in the creation of more state-level institutions – which

allowed further judicial oversight on the state level – have gradually improved the basic judicial

framework and environment, but the process has been slow; it was only in mid-2002, that the

Court of BiH and the state prosecutor’s office were established and legislation on prosecutorial

norms for both entities was put forward.3

A key early challenge to the efficiency of such a court system was the ability of the judiciary to

address the thousands of property law cases related to refugee and displaced persons from the

conflict. Initially, the local courts served more as an instrument of obstruction in terms of legal

redress for property issues, particularly if the petitioner was an ethnic minority in the court’s

jurisdiction. The international community highlighted two key areas of reform to address these

inadequacies: professionalization of the judicial system personnel and institutions and specific

procedures for cases of property and return issues. The latter issue required the establishment of

an inter-agency Property Law Implementation Plan (PLIP)4 in October 2000 which having

specific internationally provided resources and objectives, managed to solve over 90 per cent

property related return cases by the end of 2003.5 This can be considered a success of the legal

system, but not necessarily illustrative of the overall functioning of the rule of law in BiH.

2 See the OHR history of judicial reform decisions at: http://www.ohr.int/decisions/judicialrdec/archive.asp

3 http://www.ohr.int/ohr-info/key-events/default.asp?content_id=35971

4 For a copy of the plan see: http://www.unhcr.ba/protection/plip/PLIPFRAM.PDF

5 http://www.ohr.int/plip/

Bosnia Case Study

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For the former issue, professionalization of the police and judicial personnel required a thorough

vetting. Following the conflict, political and ethnic affiliations were the key criterion for

positions rather than competency. Judicial rulings were often found to be clearly politically or

ethnically biased, and police forces reflected the war time victor ethnic composition rather than

the pre-war multi-ethnic populations.

Vetting and training of police forces has gone some way towards re-establishing a rule of law

rather than an ethnic-ruled state. However efforts to make the forces truly multi-ethnic have not

been very successful. Still in 2005, only 8 per cent of Republika Srpska (RS) police were of a

minority, and in the Federation, the situation was only slightly better (ICG, 2005). Oversight by

the International Police Task Force (IPTF) and the training/vetting programs did begin to allow

an improvement of the security situation after 2000 for minority returnees (which will be covered

more in the security section below), but incidents as reported by the Bosnian Helsinki

Committee6 continued to occur still in 2005 and 2006 that at least suggested lack of efficiency if

not clear harassment of minorities by police. Still it should be noted, that overall public safety

perceptions have become quite favorable as have apprehensions of perpetrators (ESI, 2007). This

is somewhat due to better policing and coordination within the justice system (despite lack of

agreement on a state-wide police still by the end of 2006), which is a credit to the reform efforts.

However, it is likely that general attitudes and levels of public safety are partly due to the fact

that many areas of Bosnia are now only populated by a dominant ethnicity.

At the same time a vetting of judges and professionalization of the judiciary officials was

attempted. Initially a quite vigorous vetting process was carried out in 2000. However, it

appeared to only marginally improve judicial performance. In 2002, a neutral body – the

Independent Judicial Commission (IJC)7 – was created to watch over judicial professionalism

and allow citizens to have legal redress if they felt procedures or judges were unprofessional, but

even this apparently had limited effect; and as a consequence, the OHR took the controversial

6 http://www.bh-hchr.org/reports.htm

7 http://www.ohr.int/decisions/judicialrdec/default.asp?content_id=27659

Bosnia Case Study

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step of dismissing all judges in order to properly vet qualifications and practices in the rehiring

process. Key, here like in the police force, was both competency and an attempt at

(re)establishment of multi-ethnic representation at the particular court levels to reverse the mono-

ethnic institutions created by the war. International judges have also played a role in specifically

shaping the reform. A number of international judges have been part of the court process,

particularly in sensitive areas like the establishment of the War Crime Chamber (in 2005) and the

special investigation of sensitive organized crime and anti-corruption cases.

Both had also institutionalized corruption as a working model. Increases in professional salaries

as well as some level of prosecution of proven corrupt officials8 improved the overall

performance of the judicial system. But political and ethnic considerations continued to plague

the court systems through 2006, where at least the perception was that all are not equal before the

law.9

On a broader basis, basic protection of human rights, including socio-economic rights, is present,

but not consistent. Access to institutions and state resources is guaranteed in legislations

regardless of ethnic etc. identity, but discrimination, at least on a subtle if not blatant basis

remains prevalent. While blatant human rights abuses had decreased significantly from a

lackluster record in 2000 to the end of 2006, the investigation of past human rights abuses and

war crimes has been slow and politically burdened. Despite the decision of the International

Court for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, to transfer war crimes case to local

courts, the ability of these courts to effectively try these cases remains in question.

The establishment of the Human Rights Ombudsman’s office in 2000 to represent the population

in human rights cases improved access to legal redress for many disenfranchised people.10 Yet

the Dayton blue print of ethnic-based consociation for institutions in BiH, and the effects of the

8 High Representative Petritsch, for example, dismissed 11 judges and prosecutors as well as several court presidents in May 2002 for abuse of office. http://www.ohr.int/decisions/removalssdec/archive.asp?m=&yr=2002

9 In majority Bosniak and Croat areas, approximately 48 and 38 per cent respectively viewed the courts as corrupt; in Serb majority areas the figure was at 29% for 2006 (UNDP, 2006).

10 The actual establishment of the Ombudsman office was made possibility through an imposed decision of the OHR in December 2000 after delays by the parliament in passing the necessary legislation. For a copy of the OHR decision, see: http://www.ohr.int/decisions/statemattersdec/default.asp?content_id=364

Bosnia Case Study

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war still complicate the ability of an individual’s protection of legal rights. The Constitutional

Court’s ruling in 2000 on the equality of the constituency of three nations in both Entities

provided additional legal tools to see legal redress, but the trend towards substantial

improvement is slow as implementation of such rulings has also been dependent on the will of

government officials to enforce the decisions.11 This political will included the ability of a public

administration to carry out basic reforms, which largely remained unreformed through 1999

(ICG, 1999). The public administration only started improving citizens services as part of the

increased pressure to improve minority return options and demonstrated ability of the Office of

the High Representative to remove officials (even on the local level) obstructing basic Dayton

implementation and the push for a civil service law and standardized system; it took until early

2003 before a civil service agency and system was in place and functioning.

Finally it should be noted that the extensive ‘violence-prone networks’ described by the U.S.

Institute of Peace (Dziedzic, Rozen, and William, 2002) that were established during the conflict

have not been completely dismantled, despite efforts to do this by both domestic and

international actors. Informal connections between organized crime, veterans’ groups and

former soldiers as well as the political elite continue to provide a challenge for transparent and

fair decision making that is answerable to the rule of law.

Participation

After a rough start, the basic mechanics of free and fair elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina

have been entrenched within the system. However, overall engagement with the political

process or in civil society remains relatively low, due to both apathy of the populations and

structurally legitimized methods of public life that is primarily based on ethnicity.

The heavy international presence has further skewed public participation. Neither the public or

political actors have felt a responsibility for their state as politicians tended to see their role as

mediators between international powers and local interests. In the fall 2000 election campaign

five years after the peace agreement, for example, these politicians tended to campaign on behalf

11 For example, one year after the constituency decision, the court’s decision was effectively left unenforced (CEELI, 2001).

Bosnia Case Study

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of their ethnic constituencies with representatives of the international community (Papic and

Sadikovic, 2008). Ethnic distinctions in attitude to the state and international institutions

somewhat converged by 2005 and 2006, but the reasons appear to be general dissatisfaction

rather than a more engaged and supportive population (UNDP, 2006).

The issue of participation is tied up in the larger dynamic of external-domestic interaction and

responsibility. As suggested by BiH analyst Papic above, looking to the international community

to both ‘sort out’ the daily problems and ultimately make sure that the country as such would not

fall apart allowed many domestic elite to continue their narrow political agendas without having

to take responsibility for larger statebuilding issues. The high level of external power and its

level of intrusiveness in BiH arguably was a key factor in keeping the peace after Dayton, but it

created a dependency cycle which still continued at the end of 2006.

Participation was also hampered by the manner in which many of the policy decisions continued

to be made by external actors in BiH. While the OHR was considered (or at least became the de

facto) executive of BiH and still contains many almost unlimited powers, its use of these to

either develop and push through legislation for institution building and reform or in dismissing

obstructive domestic officials contributed to at least the perception that political participation in

BiH started and ended at the line in front of one of the OHR offices.

The Berlin-based think tank, European Stability Initiative (ESI), for example, in their 2003 study

of the administrative acts of the OHR suggested that the 1997 Bonn Powers given to the OHR

had gradually been racketed up as ‘instruments of bureaucratic convenience’ (Knaus and Martin,

2003) rather than reflective of administration by democratic principles which included proper

consultation and negotiation with domestic actors. The realities of an international community

trying to encourage and then push and then lead reforms inevitably resulted in this international-

domestic knot that hampered much participation in the political process throughout the ten years

following Dayton. But this dynamic was at least partially in response to the other key constraint

at play: the continued dominance and narrow and often zero sum policy interests of the ethnic-

based political parties and their elite

Bosnia Case Study

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The three main ethnic based political parties – the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), the primarily

Bosniak-dominated Party of Democratic Action (SDA), 12 and the Croatian Democratic Union

(HDZ) that emerged from the conflict have consistently remained the key brokers of political

power in BiH. During the first five years following Dayton, these three parties dominated

political life and continued their process of securing ethnic-based fiefdoms by political means.

Elections in the fall of 1996 secured the three ethnic based political parties’ grip on power, and

this continued until 2000 elections which brought in a coalition of moderate forces in the

Federation. The international decision to hold elections in 1996 before the environment for a

‘fair’ election was in place often has been criticized as cementing through the ballot box rather

than the battlefield the dominance of ethnic-based politics in BiH. The major constraint was the

issue of voter registration with estimates by OSCE in early 2006 that roughly 50 per cent of

eligible voters were outside of BiH, not to mention those displaced from within BiH.13

International pressure to ‘show progress’ in BiH is likely one reason that the OSCE decided to hold

elections at this time.

The first five years following Dayton were not monolith in political developments. The

strengthening of Banja Luka based SDS politicians like Biljana Plavsic over the Pale led-SDS of

Radovan Karadzic and Momcilo Krajisnik in 1997-1998 was arguably significant to aiding a

fragile coalition of ‘moderate nationalists to take power and to mainstream Serbian national

interests in BiH. Yet for practical purposes even this development did little to steer parties

towards more moderate positions. Alternative parties forming the ‘Alliance for Change’ in 2000

elections expanded the political landscape in the Federation and suggested that issued-based

politics was developing in BiH, At the same time, the experiment with more moderate political

forces in the RS proceeding from the Plavsic government was traded for more familiar hard-line

forces in the 2000 elections, creating a two-year political climate of hope in the Federation, but

increased acrimony between entity institutions and on the central government level.

12Bosniak refers to Bosnians of a Muslim identity.

13 http://aceproject.org/ero-en/topics/voter-registration/vry_bos1.pdf/view

Bosnia Case Study

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However the coalition of parties in the Federation was unwieldy and accordingly could not

deliver on its proposal,14 allowing ethnic-based parties to again dominate in the next elections.

The impact that this had on the overall population was palpable, with election turnout in 2002, at

55 per cent (down from 64.4 in 2000).15 As the 2002 elections were the first elections of four, not

two years, the impacts of the election victory of the main nationalist groups were even more

significant. Since then, ethnic-based parties have taken on more of the Dayton agenda (Dodik’s

winning 2006 SNSD party in the RS), have had internal splits (as was the case of the HDZ) and

or have had voters go to alternative political parties (like the Social Democrats –SDP), however

the general tone of political engagement by the end of 2006 was still based on ethnic identity.

The 2006 election of the Croat representative, Zeljko Komsic, for the tri-parte presidency by the

SDP including, a good number of Bosniaks, was hailed as an example of new Bosnian politician.

Yet the ensuing political criticism that he received from the HDZ and public questioning of

whether he could actually represent the interests of the Bosnian Croats illustrated the still

entrenched attitudes regarding political power and ethnic identity.

The political dimensions described are generally reflective of national and sub-national levels.

While there have been pockets of progressive, multi-ethnic and issue-based politics and

engagement (Tuzla area for example), the general assessment is one where participation

opportunities have improved, but will to use them has not.

Civil society development has been a much supported endeavor by the international community,

yet overall civil society development is still generally more dependent on donor agendas than

domestic initiative. Initial development of civil society issued-based organizations focused

primarily on conflict, humanitarian, and returns issues. These citizen groups have remained a

powerful and grassroots set of forces throughout Bosnia, many crossing ethnic lines to represent

issues of mutual concern.

14 Some experts like ESI would also argue that the coalition was partially undermined by the dominance of the OHR in developing and presenting legislation to the parliament for passage.

15(Bieber, Nations in Transit, 2003)

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The more Western type non-governmental organization has taken longer to develop in BiH. A

plethora of organizations sprung up as part of the large donor push to build civil society in the

year immediately following Dayton. Yet, few of them have had the institutional capacities or

strategic ability to remain relevant to their societies in a way that ensured longer term

sustainability. This is partly due to the legacy of Yugoslavia and the war years as well as the

donor driven rather than domestically driven agendas.16 Particularly difficult to develop was a

set of organizations which serve as a counterpoint to the rather rigid political party system.

Watchdog and related type think tank and research type organizations have required extensive

assistance to develop and become sustainable in a political setting that viewed them as opponents

rather than contributions to the larger society.

Competition

The election process in Bosnia and Herzegovina has evolved to technically reach OSCE

standards of free and fair elections, but the dominance of the three ethnic-based political parties

and their political and economic power structures that came out of the conflict has made it

difficult for additional parties to effectively compete on the political stage.

On the technical side, BiH institutions were able to effectively take over election implementation

by 2002 from OSCE officials. This was seen as a milestone in the ability of the state to both

guarantee and carry out free and fair elections. At the same time, the election laws and

particularly lack of election campaign transparency safeguards combined with the ethnic quota

baselines of most party lists and government compositions has hampered meaningful issue-based

political debate to focus on the issues – such as the economy – that a majority of the population

views as problematic. Rather in many cases, the informal networks between political parties,

their particular political agendas, and dominant control of most formal and informal economic

resources has resulted in a campaigns that are more foregone conclusions than competitive

opportunities for the citizens to manage their politicians.

16 For one of the many assessments of domestic NGO and international donor relations and impacts, see the chapter on Bosnian civil society in Rethinking International Organizations, Pathologies and Promise.

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The ethnic fear factor has played a dominant part of Bosnian politics. Many view their own

respective ethnic leaders as either corrupt or ineffective, but the years of conflict and aftermath in

rebuilding and return struggles have continued to provide a deep reservoir of support for

nationalist politicians, irrespective of their sketchy political platforms or achieved policies.

While at the end of 2006, UNDP Early Warning data suggests that just over 20 per cent of the

total population believes that only nationalist/ethnic parties can safeguard their interests, this data

is partially countered by the fact that ethnic pride continued to trump civic pride almost two or

three times in most Croat and Serb majority areas.17

In the years directly following Dayton, the fear factor was not only perceived but very real,

particularly in terms of allowing people access to vote in elections. Minority returnees were

often denied access to their original home voting stations, forced to vote in their temporary

accommodations and ceded through the ballet box, the right of choosing local political leaders to

the very people that had forced them from their homes. This was partly addressed through OSCE

and other international community interventions (election law, its implementation and

enforcement, etc), but intimidation to vote in place of origin voting centers as well as

discrepancies in voting lists continue to be of concern even in October 2006 parliamentary and

presidential elections.

Competition has also been thwarted by the ethnic-based design of the election process in Bosnia

and Herzegovina. While this design was part of the terms needed to agree to a peace agreement,

the ethnic-based quota system soon became seen as both undemocratic and cumbersome: it

favored the ethnic-based parties, did not easily allowing issue-based politicking and coalitions,

and required ethnic quotas for arguably redundant levels of government institutions that further

complicated the actual functioning of government institutions. It also effectively left

unrepresented those who either did not fit into the three national categories or refused to be

classified as such. Paradoxically being classified as an ‘other,’ in many ways locks such

individuals out of the political system even as it is often this self-identifying ‘other’ category that

exhibits the most interest in the larger multi-ethnic statebuilding project in Bosnia. This ‘lock

17 ‘Civic pride’ was registered at 89.5 per cent in Bosniak majority areas, 32.8 per cent in Croat majority areas, and 16.1 per cent in Serb majority areas (UNDP, 2006).

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out’ or segregation has been reinforced by a school system that essentially allows three

curriculum of three histories and three languages, etc. which has created a new generation that is

ignorant if not distrustful of its fellow citizens. Little change in these dynamics was made by the

end of 2006.

Vertical accountability and Horizontal accountability

Accountability in BiH needs to be looked at both on an international and a domestic institution

level. Ironically, neither the international institutions and actors nor the domestic actors and

institutions that they have trained, cajoled, and pushed to be responsible exemplify practices of

particularly good accountability. Generally speaking, external actors in BiH have depended on

the DPA and their respective roles in implementing this as the legitimacy for their actions.

While these institutions are ultimately accountable to the internationally comprised Peace

Implementation Council (PIC), checks on decision making powers are relatively weak. This has

been exacerbated by the complex set of international actors that have been carrying out similar or

joint actions in BiH. Decision-making transparency, accordingly, particularly within OHR

structures continues to be a point of criticism by both international watchdogs and some

domestic officials. This dynamic combined with a domestic state structure that is inherently

complex effectively hamper most efforts to achieve vertical and horizontal accountability.

The Bosnian state18 is comprised of the two entities of the Republika Srpska (RS) and the

Federation – itself a combination of Bosniak and Bosnian Croat dominated territories – and

initially provided few central government functions. For those functions ceded to the central

government, the decision making process that would allow for the institutions to function often

was supported by institutional structures or political will.

On top, Dayton created a tri-part rotating presidency comprised of the three constituent nations

of BiH. This presidency primarily had control over foreign police and trade issues and general

18 In addition to the two Entities, the 1999 arbitration decision made Brcko a self-governing district administered independently from either entity. For the history surrounding this arbitration process and governing of the Brcko District separately from either Entity, please see: http://www.ohr.int/ohr-offices/brcko/history/default.asp?content_id=5530 and http://www.ohr.int/ohr-offices/brcko/default.asp?content_id=5367

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budgetary for BiH. However the chair of the presidency was designed to change every 8 months

among the three representatives of the presidency which has minimized the leadership role that

can be played by the representatives. Assisting the presidency, the Council of Ministers (CoM)

was tasked with implementing these policies. Eventually the duties of the Council have grown as

the central government has taken on increasing tasks, with the Chair of the CoM resembling a

prime minister and the council his cabinet. At the same time, tactics to obstruct the functioning

of the Council has also increased. For example, the need for all representatives to be present in

order to make decisions has resulted in absentee tactics blocking key policies.

The legislative wing of government consists of two parliamentary chambers: the House of

Peoples and House of Representatives, each with representatives coming from the relevant

Federation or Republika Srpska legislatures. Each was tasked with carrying out legislation on

issues of the central government, however disagreement over actual interpretations of the Dayton

agreement and constitutional base as well as competencies at the central level have made the

parliament focus more on procedural issues than those of substance.

The majority of political power, however, remained in the two entities. Each entity had its own

constitution and set of procedural and territorial divisions. In the Federation, a 10-canton based

system was developed with approximately five of the cantons, dominated by Bosniak, three by

Croat, and two of mixed populations. Each cantonal was designed to be autonomous (also with

its own constitution) and responsible for its municipalities, creating difficulties in making

decisions on the Federation basis, despite Federation level parliamentary and executive structures

to coordinate this.19 Effectively, most cantons were left on their own for most areas of social

provisions even as the revenue primarily went to entity level where it was subsequently spent on

administrative costs or high cost areas such as military spending.20

19 See the Federation government website for more information on the specific Federation level institutions. http://www.fbihvlada.gov.ba/english/index.php

20 As described by Bieber (Nations in Transit, 2003), both entities spent a good part of their budgets on the military and veterans (approximately 6 percent of overall GDP). Estimates were that up to 25% of the budget was spent on war veterans in the Federation, and only after an OSCE led public campaign did attempts to raise this percentage even more fail.

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In the RS, the system of municipalities highly controlled under a central government (firstly in

Pale) and later in Banja Luka, arguably allowed some level of greater efficiency if not local level

democracy in the functioning of the RS. At the same time in the Federation, the creation of 10

cantons, some mixed, some dominated by one ethnicity, which were further divided into

municipalities created both a confusing and easily manipulated political system.

To further complicate the system, shadow institutions, specifically in the Croatian dominated

areas of the Federation, continued to operate de facto quite openly until 2001 and arguably to

some degree in the years following.21 The 1994 Washington Agreement between Croats and

Bosniaks in BiH created the Federation which was a core component of the post-Dayton

structure. However, in reality, the ethnic-dominated structures of the Herceg Bosna state did not

quickly disappear even with the signing of Dayton at the end of 1995. This not only created

parallel systems of governance, but provided little incentive to cooperate or develop common

institutions with Sarajevo rather than hang on to their respective political fiefdoms. A stark

example of this was the situation in ethnically mixed Central Bosnian Canton. In 1998, the

canton officially had 11 municipalities, but due to the continued functioning of the Herceg Bosna

structures, there were arguably almost twice that many municipalities if considering the de facto

municipalities that had been carved out of the war time territorial acquisitions.

In essence this created one of the most complicated government structures in modern history. Or

as described by an Open Society assessment in 2001 (Papic), BiH is a country of 13

constitutions with 13 governments (plus a 14th with Brcko), 13 assemblies and over 200

ministers, and 13 prime ministers (plus the international community), and few if any talking to

each due to unwillingness or institutional inabilities unless forced by the international

community.

The structures for democratic government, accordingly, are and have been in place in Bosnia and

Herzegovina, but the political will to make the complicated system work, or to reform the system

into a more streamlined set of government structures has not had equal levels of interest by the

21 However, it was not until 2004 that Mostar, the de facto capital of Herceg Bosna became unified as one city between Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks in the Federation, and the budget for Mostar was not passed until mid 2005.

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domestic political elite. From the RS point of view, the Dayton Agreement should be

implemented according to the specific requirements set out in the agreement while many in the

Federation rather have viewed Dayton as a basis for further negotiations and development of

institutions (the international community shared the latter view). Or as Ms Plavsic famously said

to US Secretary of State Albright in 1998 when the international community was attempting to

push through reforms to strengthen the state, “we are not interested in implementing in the spirit

of Dayton, but the actual aspects of Dayton (Bieber, 2005)

Despite these divergent views, reforming the constitution or ‘getting beyond Dayton’ has slowly

become more acceptable to main parties, allowing a real chance at constitutional reform in 2006.

However, after much international facilitation, a package of reforms that would help streamline

decision making was agreed upon, but ended up narrowly failing in a parliamentary vote; this set

the tone for the remainder of the year and politics were as divisive as ever.

European Union integration incentives had helped some in the past years to convince political

elite of the rewards for supporting a more centralized Bosnian state eventually making 50 state

level institutions, but only to the degree that strategic areas of responsibility are not

compromised; disagreement between RS and Federation political elites on a more centralized

policing system is just one example of the push and pull dynamics that dominated political space

through the end of 2006.

The state building project of a new state from the shell of the Bosnian republic of Yugoslavia

and war-time governments – which in many domestic minds is synonymous with democracy –

accordingly, has not been one that has been equally prioritized by the key political actors, rather

primarily pushed by the international community. By the end of 2006, these efforts have

produced something resembling a state, its basic democratic structures, and more and more

evidence of democratic practice as some of these institutions have become more functional.

But the ‘stickiness’ of democracy continues to elude Bosnia as has a sense of a shared destiny.

Democracy has been more of a buzzword than a standard of governance, making domestic

ownership of the democratization process fragile. While there is ‘no other game in town’ and all

politicians speak of democratic structures and practices and their place in Europe, the path

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towards consolidating institutions and embedding democratic norms in government and society

without heavy or even light international oversight will likely last at least another decade.

Security

The relative security of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the success stories of the international

intervention. Bosnian police, military, and border patrol now have the capacities through years of

technical assistance, mentoring, and oversight to provide basic security in BiH. As is the case in

many post-conflict countries, internal security threats are dominant over external and

neighborhood concerns. Tellingly, the public perception remains, at least for many, that the

presence of international military and police personnel is still required to ‘maintain the peace,’

although their numbers at the end of 2006 were more symbolic than anything.

By the end of 2006 according to UNDP polls, free of movement and citizens’ sense of security is

roughly similar to most Western European countries (ESI, 2007). All major security forces were

under international or joint domestic oversight,22 no serious lingering security forces threatened

the security of the country, and the State Border Service (SBS) served as a model of how a multi-

ethnic state-wide service related institution can function.23 BiH’s inability to reach political

agreement on a state-wide police service has remained a key constraint to better policing. It is

likely that inter-entity policing cooperation would only improve with a reformed structure, but

the creation of such a structure itself would not substantially improve overall security without

further tackling the linking and reform of all law enforcement and rule of law agencies.

Still this presents a quite a drastic difference from the security situation present immediately

following Dayton or even several years after. Borders were porous, but internally initially

freedom of movement was highly constricted primarily based on territorial and ethnic

considerations. Minority return (a key to the reversal of ethnic cleansing during the war and

guaranteed by the DPA Annex 7) was initially effective blocked by localized police and military

22 Official command of the armed forces of BiH was transferred to the presidency in 1999, after which the Defense Commission as set up to begin the process of outlining legislation for a united military (partly as part of the NATO Partnership for Peace (PFP) requirement in 2003. Legislation to make a unified BiH army was passed by the parliament in October, 2005.

23 The SBS took over its first set of border crossings in early 2001.

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control, and later by organized or sanctioned acts of violence against minority returnees and their

property. And police duties to ‘serve and protect’ were more often understood to ‘serve and

protect one’s own kind’ as described by ICG still in 2002.24

Major international efforts to create the necessary legal and security environment for this to

happen started to show results by 2000 when, as according to ICG (2000), even spontaneous

minority returns (without official UNHCR assistance) increased four-fold during the first four

months as compared to 1999. However it should be noted that despite a return of over 1 million

of the estimated 2.2 million displaced, still in January 2006 BiH remained on UNHCR’s list for

major countries of internally displaced persons (IDP), with 182,700 still listed as IDPs.25 A look

at 1991 and 2005 maps below provide a sense of the levels of displacement and return.26

The OHR-decree for standardizing and launching of BiH-wide license plates27 in 1998 some

argue was the single most important decision taken by the OHR to allow freedom of movement

and its aggressive work with local governments on minority return provided the base for opening

up return options.

And the vetting and reformation of multi-ethnic police forces and the decommissioning and

professionalization of military forces under IFOR and SFOR supervision has allowed the

security situation to stabilize to the point that while 3 military forces are still separate, they share

a joint command and have even participated under the BiH flag in several international

peacekeeping missions. At the same time, incidents like the 2004 swearing in of troops under the

RS rather than BiH oath in Banja Luka, and the impasse over police reform on a state level (it is

currently controlled on the entity basis) serve as a reminder of the underlying tensions still

24 http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1500&l=1

25 http://www.unhcr.org/basics/BASICS/3b028097c.html

26 http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/bosnia/ethnic_majoities_bosnia.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Ethnic_Composition_of_BiH_in_2005.GIF

27 http://www.ohr.int/decisions/statemattersdec/default.asp?content_id=347

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present in the security related services and the potential impact these could have on the peace

process.

State capacity, legitimacy, service provision

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a hybrid protectorate of the international community. Many state

institutions have had to be built from scratch and at least initially had high levels of international

oversight or engineering in the development and functioning. This high level of assistance was

considered necessary both for technical support as well as political will to achieve institutional

objectives. While this has resulted in the building up of a number of institutions and their

competencies, it has also muddied the process of developing ownership by the domestic officials.

As a result, the population often still looks to the OHR and related international officials to solve

problems in navigating various institutions rather than its own officials. And where officials

have taken ownership, this has sometimes been thwarted by executive powers of the OHR,

rendering many citizens and officials to say that they actually have ‘no state and institutions’ in a

non-existent state.

Bosnian citizens have a complex relationship with their state. On one side, many feel more

allegiance to specific ethnic structures or actors than the state as a whole. On the other side, the

modern state of BiH is the same as that of the republic of Bosnia within Yugoslavia, and this

arguably (despite the war and its traumas) has a certain point of identification within the

population and has also served to help construct some level of civic identity.

Still, the ability of one ethnicity within geographic BiH to represent another certainly has its

limits. And depending on the political issue at hand, the rhetoric has often tended towards

challenging the legitimacy of decision making powers, authority, and even the state itself. Even

at the end of 2006 such issues remained sensitive. After October 2006 elections Bosnian HDZ

leadership questioned whether the elected Croatian representative (Zeljko Komsic) to the joint

presidency could actually represent Bosnian Croat interests given that his victory was due to

non-HDZ and multi-ethnic voters (of his Social Democratic party). Alternatives to the BiH

remain on the table, whether a ‘free RS and or joined up with Serbia’ and or a Croatian entity

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within BiH and or joined up with Croatia. And as long as both of these visions have some

following the legitimacy of BiH state structures will remain in question.

The legacy of living in Yugoslavia has also meant that the population has certain expectations in

terms of their government’s ability to provide adequate social and economic opportunities.

Many of these expectations have been repeatedly dashed a) partly due to corruption,

mismanagement or incompetence of domestic institutions28 or the influence of informal

structures of acquisition, (b) partly due to the late start that domestic and international actors

gave to addressing socio-economic issues, and c) partly due to the inherent challenges of

transition from a planned and war-time economy(s) to a more market-oriented one. Loyalty,

accordingly, has often been given to those that can produce the goods, whether a shadow Herceg

Bosna state, connected officials, international agencies, or even at times the actual Bosnian

institution. This complex and ever-changing set of loyalties reflects the complex set of

international and domestic actors (formal and informal) that have an impact on running the

Bosnian state.

The weakness of the state is perhaps best captured by examining the post-conflict economic

transition process. Economic transition was repeatedly hindered by political elites’ state capture

of most significant economic resources. Control of state industries as well as dodgy

privatizations were a primary means of asset accumulation of the war time and post war political

elite. Like in many other former communist countries, many companies had their assets stripped

while the new owners used the secured funds to build their financial empires. Arguably some of

these financial resources were used in the pursuit of ethnic-based political goals at the expense of

building up institutions which would provide public goods and services.

The international community initially prioritized the setting up of basic financial institutions –

banking, revenue collection, etc. – while allowing the link between the dominant politicians and

economic assets to remain strong. However attempts to break this hold on economic resources

were boosted after 2000 through punitive actions against some of the political elite as well as

28 BiH government institutions took up 56 per cent of GDP in 2004 with most of the expenses for maintaining public institutions rather than service provision or other programs (ESI, 2004).

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legislative efforts to improve the ability of BiH to function as a joint economic space and

streamline the regulatory environment for domestic and foreign investment.

As a result, service provision is only a fraction of the capacity that the population experienced

during Yugoslavia. The economic transition and the war years would be a tough enough

challenge, but these compounded by lack of political will and accountability made most

Bosnians worse or much worse off at the end of 2000 and in 2006 than they were in 1990.

Socially vulnerable individuals in BiH, for example, particularly have been affected by the still

inconsistent and re-developing social welfare system. Services exist, but are still developing or

not seen as adequate. The UNDP Early Warning Annual for 2006 estimates that approximately

20 of social welfare recipients receive 70 per cent of the resources in a system that is often at

least perceived as opaque, bureaucratic, and inefficient. Regardless of status as a welfare

recipient, the ‘lack of a social state’ is also one of the main reasons cited for citizens’ interested

to emigrate from BiH (UNDP, 2006).

In terms of state capacity milestones, the generally successful introduction of a flat 17% VAT

system at the beginning of 2006, while controversial for both political and social impacts, did

however, demonstrate that BiH has managed to take on one of the basic attributes of a state in its

ability to levy and collect taxes in a new and unified state level system.

Overall institutional capacities vary across the spectrum of BiH structures and the level of

international guidance and or implementation involved. The often unclear division of labor

between the international community and the specific institutions has contributed to the slow

rebuilding and development of state capacities, and this is reflected in the level of confidence

that the institutions enjoy. Political institutions, for example, average a bit more then 40 per cent

of public confidence in both competency and performance.29 All manners of corruption have

stymied many attempts at further instilling institutional capacities and professionalism. For

29 State, entity, and municipality institutions enjoy roughly between 45-60 per cent confidence (with the highest

level often at the municipal level). This has been a slow, if steady improvement since Dayton (UNDP, 2006).

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example, the health care system – which has recovered to general pre-war levels at least in urban

areas – is often cited as one of the most corrupt and inefficient institutions in BiH, but it has a lot

of company according to a report commissioned by the Swedish International Development

Cooperation Agency (SIDA) in 2005 (Devine and Mathisen).

Another factor in assessing capacities is the role or the perceived role that corruption plays in the

day to day operations of institutions. According to one study (Lewis, 2006) over 75 per cent of

BiH officials, for example, believed that accessing a state job or getting a promotion required a

bribe. This apparent ‘selling of public positions’ for connections rather than merit does little to

instill confidence or professionalism in public institutions.

Interdependence

The links between democracy, security and state capacities are not clearly drawn in Bosnia and

Herzegovina. By the end of 2000, officially there was democracy, but it still had the face of war

time victors and political elite who were seen as more interested in their pockets than their

populations. The fact that this was still true at the end of 2006 speaks to the durability of the war

victors. Security concerns in 2000, particularly in the issue of safe minority return and travel

dominated state building efforts, and little progress could be made in other areas until this basic

environment had improved. Since the push to get tough on domestic security and law

enforcement, security fears have abated – initially due to international oversight – and more

recently due to growing confidence in domestic law and order institutions; yet, successes in

security alone has not provided the environment to transcend war time traumas and grievances or

tackle the challenge of working together to improve levels of governance, capacity, and a joint

future Freedom House’s Freedom in the World (FIW) scores for BiH correspond to this

complicated reality. In its look at political and civil freedoms, BiH continues to remain only

partially ‘free.’ While there has been a steady improvement since the war years (increasing from

5 in 1996 to 3 in 2006), FIW scores reflect the fact that state institutions and other nonstate

factors continue to inhibit basic rights of full democratic participation

The state has more public officials and levels than nearly any other state, but it consistently falls

short of functioning according to domestic expectations. Living standards for most are not

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22

desperate, but are also not good and definitely worse than in pre-war circumstances, and few see

the state as having the ability to change or improve this socio-economic situation. This has

caused a certain resignation among the population; even by the end of 2006, over 40 of the

population felt pessimistic about the future of the state; even more telling over 46 percent wanted

to emigrate, and 71 per cent of youth (18-35) would leave Bosnia if they could (UNDP, 2006).

Such dynamics have done little to improve the democratic participation of citizens in their

government or to ultimately allow people to feel invested in their own country. The result has

been a set of populations living under an EU-ish type Bosnian flag, but mostly exhausted,

unwilling, or skeptical of giving more energy to the state building project and democracy unless

shown more clear rewards for their efforts.

SECTION II: PRE-WAR AND WAR VARIABLES

A: Long-term structural factors

Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of the six socialist republics of Yugoslavia. Tito’s Yugoslavia

as a key Non-Aligned country had a particular hybrid blend of communism which allowed some

level of economic and cultural openness while keeping a heavy hand on political dissent. The

key unifying institution of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav Army (JNA) which also serviced as one

of the key industries of the country. Favorable loans from both East and West, remittances from

a significant “guest worker” population in Western Europe, and the ability to produce and trade

with all sides allowed the population of Yugoslavia to have a living standard much higher than

the rest of the Eastern Bloc. According to WDI indicators, GDP growth was steady with an average

of 5.6 per cent between 1970 and 1978 and $2380 in 1978. In 1990, GNP was registered at $3060.

Political freedoms were the trade-off for this relatively high standard of living, and for those that

disagreed, it was generally easier to emigrate than to go up against the communist party. After

the death of Yugoslavia’s autocrat, Broz Tito in 1980, political expressions of nationalism

became more possible and were often the vehicle of voicing opposition to the state and the

communist party. At the same time economic woes became harder to suppress during this

decade, and the country was plunged into an economic as well as political whirlwind that most

political elite understood as a zero sum game (Woodward, 1995) Republic-level political elite

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23

particularly focused on securing their respective political and economic resources; consequently,

during the time of massive political change across Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980’s,

Yugoslav elite did less to reform the political and economic system of Yugoslavia than to

dismantle it.

The international role during this time remains controversial. The calling-in of IMF loans and

demands for massive liberalization reforms (as well as the energy crisis) has been cited many

times as a key card in the deck of the fragile post-Tito Yugoslavia. By the end of the 1980’s,

much Western attention was focused on the landmark political breakthroughs taking place in

East Germany and around the Warsaw Pact region. Interest in democratizing was also present in

Yugoslavia, but the domestic political interest was divided over how to democratically develop,

whether together or as separate countries. The inability of politicians to find compromise in this

dilemma eventually led to the breakup of Yugoslavia.

BiH was not the poorest or the richest republic in Yugoslavia. Sandwiched between wealthier

Croatia and Serbia, it had regions of high and low economic development. This is partly

reflected in the high number of “guest workers” and their remittances that were connected to

BiH.30 Massive industrialization during the post WWII period drastically changed the economic

living standards of most Yugoslavs; urban migration from the primarily village based economies

was a wide-spread phenomenon, and basic standards of education and health were a hallmark of

the Yugoslav region. BiH as a mountainous and primarily rural population in the 1940’s became

like much of the rest of Yugoslavia, a republic existing of two realities: one industrialized and

urban, and one with higher standards, but still living a more traditional village and agricultural

life.

A number of key industries were built up in BiH including petrochemicals and the steel industry.

And perhaps most importantly much of the weapons production and storage for the Yugoslav

Army (JNA) was based in BiH, making it a strategic component of Yugoslavia’s not

insignificant military industrial complex.

30 Estimates suggest that 9.2 per cent of the Bosnian workforce was employed abroad in 1971 (Donia and Fine, 1994)

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Communist party members as well as JNA officers primarily served as the political elite during

Yugoslavia. While this class of people did receive more perks than the ordinary citizen, the life

style differences between a worker in a factory and its manager were less significant than in

other communist systems. Still tensions over political and economic privileges combined with

an urban/rural divide arguably served as a component of the ethnic-based frenzy that helped start

and keep the war going.

BiH was a multi-ethnic republic of Yugoslavia and in many ways served as an illustration of the

idealized Yugoslav persona. Three major ethnic groups (Serb, Croat and Bosniak31) plus other

minorities and ‘mixed’ ethnicities lived in BiH. The effects of industrialization/urbanization and

building of the Yugoslav state had a strong impact on Bosnians’ sense of identity. By 1990 over

40 per cent of urban couples were ethnically mixed (Donia and Fine, 1994), and particularly

many of their children saw themselves as ‘Yugoslav’ rather than any other ethnicity. The 1991

census for BiH, identifies 43 per cent as Bosniak, 31 per cent as Serb, 17 per cent Croat and 8

per cent other (Cox, 1998). At the same time, many villages were dominated by a single ethnic

group and towns a combination of ethnic areas (Cox, 1998). The map below provides a basic

ethnic breakdown of pre-war BiH according to municipality. The white lines are the post-war

Inter-Entity Boundary Line. 32

31 Tito’s Yugoslavia did not recognize Muslims as a distinct ethnicity until the 1971 census.

32 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ethnic_relations_1991.GIF

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The government’s performance in BiH during Yugoslavia both in terms of regulatory capacities

(things were safe and stable) and service provisions (socialist-based and generous) BiH enjoyed

the Yugoslav-wide standards of quite high standards (if not necessarily sustainable in the long-

term). During the time of Yugoslavia, BiH had republic level institutions which managed most

day-to-day affairs of the population in BiH from a republic level media to health care provision

to energy supply.

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Yet most strategic level decision making had been taken at the Belgrade level. While the new

system had many of the old political elite reborn as the politicians and officials of the day with

many standards of governance based on the model of Yugoslavia, the republic level BIH

institutions suddenly were tasked with state mandates if not state capacities. Accordingly, both

strategic as well as democratic know-how was in short supply in the new country of BiH. This

combined with a post war Bosnia that was officially divided into two but, de facto divided into

at least three parts (and three systems of war time government) provided a challenging basis for

strategizing and managing statewide institutions.33

War–related factors

The violent conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995 has been

classified by many as an ethnic civil war, but this description does not fully capture the regional

dimension or the interests involved. The three main warring parties were roughly divided along

ethnic lines of Bosnian Serb, Bosnian Croat, and Bosniaks, but particularly the Serb and Croat

forces received significant support from their ethnic kin in power in Zagreb (Croatia) and

Belgrade; Serbs particularly benefitted from the fact that Belgrade had the majority of the JNA

resources and military might. As well, fighting in Croatia had an effect on BiH both in terms of

military staging grounds for opposing armies (Croat vs. JNA) as well as in terms of refugee

flows.

Generally speaking, Bosniaks were fighting to preserve the territorial integrity and multi-ethnic

aspects of the BiH state while Serbs and Croats carved out territories for their populations which

were adjacent to their patron states. However a good number of Bosnian citizens, particularly

from the urban areas, supported the development of a multi-ethnic Bosnian state and fought with

the primarily Bosnian Muslim government to preserve this.

The actual political break up of the state of Yugoslavia was started by Slovenia declaring

independence, soon followed by Croatia in 1991. JNA attacks on Slovenia and then Croatia soon

33 The DPA provides for eventual state-wide public companies (Annex 9) in a number of key areas, including postal service, electricity, etc. Each was part of the Yugoslav system so compatible, but political will to re-connect such grids has been a slow process.

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followed. With Serbia the remaining dominant republic in Yugoslavia, and its president

Slobodan Milosevic having used the cause of ethnic Serbs to justify military action in Slovenia

and Croatia, Bosnian politicians had few good options for finding a point of accommodation

with Belgrade. Independence was subsequently declared in March 1992 despite disagreement by

many of Bosnian Serbs.

At the moment of independence, BiH was a Muslim majority country, but with sizeable

minorities of Serbs and Croats. War broke out in BiH after a tense political process surrounding

independence broke down. Most of the actors were from ethnic-based nationalist parties that had

won 1990 elections (many born out of the breaking apart of the communist party). The political

elite of the Bosnian Serbs were particularly against the idea of living in a Muslim majority state,

and with the backing of Belgrade (and a sizeable portion of the Yugoslav military resources)

raised the political stakes to the point of confrontation, attacking parts of BiH after the

declaration of independence to begin to take de facto control particularly of large parts of the east

and north of the country.

Officially, Serbs in Bosnia were against the succession of Bosnia and Herzegovina from

Yugoslavia, however as the war progressed, efforts to secure mono-ethnic territories became the

main issue of conflict. The Bosnian Croat population, initially siding with the majority Bosnian

Muslim Sarajevo-based government, changed sides in the fall of 1992 and began fighting against

both Bosniak and Serb forces in order to secure Croat territories, particularly in the Croatian

dominant region of Herzegovina and heavily mixed Central Bosnia. This expanded the two-

sided into a three-sided war, causing particular devastation in areas of very mixed populations,

most notorious of all Sarajevo.

On one level the war was about ethnic identity and power. On another level, it was about

securing and dividing the economic spoils of the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina that

became the new state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the individual level, military forces looted

and pillaged most things of value from property that they took over. And on the governmental

level, any state asset of value was taken under the new de facto governments and their militaries

to assist in the war effort.

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These were supplemented by profits from breaking the international arms embargo34 that had

been imposed on the entire region in 1991 as well as ‘taxes’ on international aid coming into

BiH.35 And black market trading between the various front lines particularly kept the criminal

elements of each side well financed and consequently well positioned to keep their various

positions of power. By the end of 1995, a number of war entrepreneurs on all sides had profited

nicely from the conflict. And it was these actors who served as the largest obstruction to building

the rule of law in a post-war Bosnian state. They unlike their political counterparts or normal

citizens had both the means and interest to cooperate across ethnic lines in Bosnia and

Herzegovina and throughout the region.36

Recruitment for the three militaries was initially part of a larger ideological campaign that was

waged effectively by the governments and most evident in the state-controlled media(s).

However as the war intensified, many took up arms as a means of defense, either having

witnessed violent conflict already or imminently fearing its arrival in their part of BiH. It should

also be noted that a number of young men left BiH instead of fighting, many of these the

educated and multi-ethnic focused portion of the young generation. Along with the domestic

military recruitments, each side had soldiers and irregular or paramilitary forces from their

patron state or in the case of the Bosniaks, Muslim fighters who came from around the world to

take up the cause of the BiH Army.

War variables

Official war broke out in 1992, but this was precipitated by violent events similar to those that

led to violent conflict in Croatia; a number of isolated and targeted acts of violence and killings

by informal or paramilitary groups sparked larger tensions and provided justifications for an

escalation from political rhetoric to one of opposing military forces. At first some of the fighting

was done by irregular forces, both as a means of official denial (on the part of the Bosnian Serbs

34 UN Security Council Resolution 713

35 Particularly Bosnian Serbs, having military superiority, appeared to profit from the delivery of UN humanitarian assistance to the populations. An internal U.S. State Department report released at the end of 1992, for example, suggested that Bosnian Serbs routinely skimmed 23 per cent of all aid delivered during that time (Gordan, 1993).

36 For further discussion of the political economy of the war and its aftermath, see Peter Andreas (2004).

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but with JNA equipment) and due to the lack of a professional military (an improvised army of

BiH) and soon a similar Herceg Bosna Croat army (but funded by Zagreb and Diaspora). These

irregular forces were often from